The BBC may consign itself to the dustbin of history by killing off any chance of change

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Other than holding a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union, is there really any point left in the Cameron Government? From school academies to tax credits, disability benefits, refugees, trade union reform and so on, one policy after another has been abandoned at the first sign of grapeshot.

In part, that’s because of the slimness of the Government’s majority, making it continually vulnerable to backbench rebellion. But in no small measure it’s also about the perceived need to reach out across the political divide to Labour voters in the hope of securing their support for the campaign to remain in the EU.

Without it, the Government cannot hope to win the referendum. The upshot is a grey and uninspiring form of rule by consensus, where much like the previous, Coalition Government, it is essentially the status quo that presides. The opportunity for necessary, root and branch reform across a range of government institutions and functions has been all but abandoned.

The latest example comes in the form of today’s white paper on the future of the BBC. Ministers promised a roar, but they have brought forth no more than a squeak. The Prime Minister is said to have intervened at the last moment, and for fear of frightening the horses before the EU vote, watered down the proposals. He needn’t have bothered. The white paper was already so anodyne as to be scarcely worth the paper it was written on.

There is much sound and fury over whether changes to governance will compromise the BBC’s treasured independence. It suits both sides in the debate to suggest that here are matters of real substance to quarrel over. The reality is that the BBC emerges largely unscathed from Conservative threats to tear up the charter and begin again. It’s a lot of noise about nothing.

There, however, the parallels with Cromwell must end, for Henry VIII’s chief minister was a true revolutionary who in his rejection of Rome and his championing of the common law changed the faced of Britain for ever. It is hard to imagine a modern day Cromwell wanting to freeze the BBC in time, setting it up as some kind of untouchable sacred cow that must be preserved at all costs.

Kosminsky’s use of this expression “envy of the world” is instructive, for it is more often applied to the National Health Service, another, much loved British institution that commands a special place in the nation's heart. In many respects, both these constructs deserve their public affection.

The BBC continues to produce some great programming, and though there is frequent complaint of bias in its news coverage, reflective as it is of a liberal, left leaning, metropolitan, faintly elitist outlook on the world, it remains essential viewing for anyone with even the remotest interest in current affairs.

Likewise the NHS, whose standards of care, from cradle to grave, free at the point of delivery, most of us have good reason to be grateful for. Yet the “envy of the world”? Sadly, this long since ceased to be true. If they were, one would have thought that by now some attempt to replicate them would have been made.

Strangely, there is no great rush to do so. Indeed, if you were starting from scratch in designing a universal healthcare system, or a public service broadcaster, nobody would choose the funding model used for either the NHS or the BBC. There are better, more effective ways of satisfying rising public expectations for healthcare, without the perpetual sense of crisis which seems to surround the NHS.

The same goes for the BBC. Even as it celebrates victory against the forces of “darkness”, the BBC has in fact damned itself to a future of growing irrelevance that will make the licence fee ever harder to justify.

It is not the politicians that the BBC has to fear most, but the march of technology, and the advent of any time, any place, global content.

Anyone beneath the age of 40, and many of us older types too, no longer consume our media by settling down with a cup of cocoa for an evening of channel hopping between the BBC and ITV.

The row over independence is a backward looking sideshow of ever less relevance to the way people watch and buy their media.

With the thick end of £4bn of licence fee revenue to support it, the BBC may seem a big player. And on a national scale, it most certainly is, crowding out rival forms of commercial media. It is also true that the BBC remains probably the UK’s most instantly recognisable global brand.

Yet as a global player, it is very much an also ran, and one, moreover, which is fast being overtaken by much younger, digital upstarts.

To survive and prosper, the BBC needs to change fundamentally. Its funding model needs to be upended, and large parts of it probably ought to be privatised, so that they can more effectively sell their content to rival global platforms. British media, in its wider form, is not going to thrive by attempting to maintain an essentially closed shop, protectionist approach to broadcasting.

Many of the recent run of Downing Street climbdowns may be understandable in view of the virtual hiatus in government the referendum campaign has caused.

But the BBC’s course has been set for the next eleven years. In a fast changing world, this is a long time to tie yourself to an already outdated form of broadcasting. By defending its model so effectively, making itself immune to meaningful change, the BBC may in the long term be assigning itself to the dustbin of history.